Egan pulls himself up off canvasto fight on

His tangled soul is still slowly unravelling itself but it’s already reached a point of clarity where Kenneth Egan can help others.

Not even two weeks ago, he was just out of bed, reading the day’s entry in a self-help book he picks up every morning, when a text came through from a friend who couldn’t yet self-help. Recognising the symptoms, Egan took a snap of the page as a reply.

February 9: Plenty of practising alcoholics know they’re in desperate need for AA but are reluctant to do anything about it as they feel their friends will ridicule them. So they continue drinking and making themselves ridiculous. Too many people put too much emphasis on the reactions of others and on reactions that are not worth considering.

It clearly resonated because on Wednesday, he took that same friend to his first AA meeting. But it resonated with Egan too, because it summed up much of his life and while it may be the past, there’s always a danger it’s also lurking in the future.

“It was only at the end of these Olympics when the lads were getting medals — John Joe Nevin in particular — that I appreciated the medal I had won,” he says.

“It took four years. But while that may have been my best achievement in the ring, in life it’s being sober. I treat that sobriety so seriously. If anyone comes near me and asks if I want a drink, I turn on them. People I knew before, that I’d bump into the odd time, do ask. But I don’t say I’m not in the mood, I cut straight to the point. Stay away from the first drink, we are told.”

He’s 30 months without it at this stage, and likes to recall Tommy Lee Jones’ character from In the Electric Mist who, as a recovering alcoholic, each day buys a glass of bourbon in a local bar, looks at it and leaves without touching a drop. “I’ve never come that close thankfully,” he admits, but there have been moments. The worst was in Rathcoole a year-and-a-half ago. Handing a friend a pint of Guinness, the foam ran over the lip of the glass and across his hands. He licked his fingers clean but while he stayed strong then, he knows there’ll be more temptations.

Just like tonight, and while it’s win or lose for most at the national boxing championships, for Egan there’s the potential to lose everything no matter how he fares in his huge clash with Joe Ward. When victorious for 10 years in a row, alcohol was flowing in celebration but last year in defeat, there were heavy whispers in the shadows of his mind.

“After Joe beat me, I thought my finger was broken and I was saying I better not wait till tomorrow, I need to go to [St] James’s. But I was driving and all of a sudden there’s that moment of madness, the little devil on my shoulder — ‘Just keep driving down the country, check into a B&B or a hotel and drink away’. What stopped me?

“The programme says think first before you do anything and I had time to ask myself, ‘will it be worth it?’ I was so close, telling myself ‘what harm? I’m after getting beaten but that’s the perfect time to let the guard down’. They say in AA when you are asleep the alcoholism is down the end of your bed doing press ups, staying fit, getting ready to pounce.

“The thought was gone after that night, I got to the meetings which was very important. I’m still going three or four times a week, it’s part of my training and I’ll be in meetings till the day I die. And you do have great craic at them sometimes. There was a load of AA heads at the fight, the semi-final last weekend, down to support me. I call them the fellowship. But tonight, if I lost, those thoughts might be back again. If they are, I’ll pick up the phone. This won’t beat me.”

He’s evidence of that for you too. Last year he went on his brother’s stag to Benidorm and while those with him simply drank, he watched sport in the bar during the day and was in bed each night by 11. It was boring though, so he’s refused a return invite this time around. Instead he’s been playing pitch and putt, going to the cinema, going to see gigs with some friends from his meetings. Plus there’s been the multiple daily training sessions ahead of tonight’s light heavyweight title bout.

“Where would I be if I never drank?” he asks.

“That came up in AA. I wish I’d found it when I was 20 but they tell you it wasn’t meant to be and that I found it at the right time, 28, after a bellyful of it and when I was done with it. That has allowed me to keep going. If I was still on the drink I wouldn’t be in that ring, I’d be retired. Plus there’s been nothing about my private life because I’m not giving the media things to talk about. Before, I was in the public eye, out on the piss, didn’t know where I was going, what I was doing, who I was with. I give tabloids a quick story.

“But all that stuff back in the day, I brought it all on myself. Now I’m back in the back of the papers. I know time is limited and I’d love to go to Rio as a coach. As a boxer, it’s a long time to stay at the top of a sport like this but I could be like George Foreman. Wow, I could release the Egan Grill! When I first went back on Twitter the first few people that contacted me were calling me a pervert, asking was I looking for hookers. The Egan Grill though, I can get that out there on Twitter now, make it work for me.”

Much has changed but thankfully the humour hasn’t. And while he may not be the same boxer he once was, he’s more of a fighter than ever before.